


The Name Game

by Strange_Archivist



Series: Everything, Every Things [12]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 00:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12996258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strange_Archivist/pseuds/Strange_Archivist
Summary: El hates fighting with Mike. And she’s grateful over the years that their fights are rare, and usually just the result of perfect storm combinations of stress and misunderstandings (most of these, incidentally, occur during the year they try to plan their wedding). But she finds she enjoys (and he seems to too) making up quite a bit.OREL and Mike have their first real fight and it's a doozy.





	The Name Game

**Author's Note:**

> Rated teen for swearing and references to drinking and only the barest of references to premarital sex. I again, think this is pretty tame, particularly considering how much swearing and drinking there is in the show itself, but I don't want anyone to get their panties in a bunch over anything here, so consider yourselves warned. They're all well over drinking age here too, so no one can say I'm glorifying underage drinking :P

No one ever believed them when they said they didn't fight. After living together for nearly five years, surely they'd have fought over laundry or dishes or what movie to rent or  _something_ , right?

"Is that, bad?" El had asked Max over the phone uncertainly one night when Max had expressed her incredulity at their having never really had what was considered a normal lover's spat.

"What? No, no. I mean, I dunno, so long as you aren't like, bottling your emotions up. Going to bed angry and all that. You know? Just, I can't imagine getting through one day without wanting to deck that dude, let alone the literal friggin' lifetime you've been together."

"We haven't been together a  _lifetime_."

"Twelve years, if you don't count that year he was sending you those pathetic verbal love letters over the supercom -"

"Which we  _don't_."

"Yeah, yeah, Romeo and Juliet, pining for each other, blah blah fart. I know. I'm just saying, that's a LONG time to be together without fighting at least a little bit, even over something stupid. You're statistically way overdue for an argument. Hang on a sec." There's a scraping sound and she can hear Max's muffled voice shouting, "Hey Marco, try starting it now, will ya?" The sounds of a car starting and purring to life. "Figured that would do it. Thanks, dude. You can turn it off now." More scraping, and then Max's voice is clear again. "Alright, sorry about that."

"It's no problem. How's the garage going?"

Max's voice brightens and she launches into an excited jabbering screed about how well her new garage is doing, especially now that she made a deal with a nearby trade school to take on auto-repair students.

"They still hardly ever have any girl students, but I almost always take those ones when I can. Gotta mentor those future little Max's out there, you know."

El smiles, thinking of how fun a place the garage probably is to work. "Good for you. I wish I could do that but..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you got into computer science because computers aren't complicated like humans. BASIC is an easier language than English, I know. You know I don't judge you for that, right? I mean, just because you're an awesome woman in tech doesn't mean you're obligated to be everything to every little girl in the world. You're already kicking ass and taking names, you know?"

Her smile widens. "Thanks. I think I needed to hear that."

"Anytime. You're like, Grace Hopper, only, you know, El. El Hopper."

El smiles, remembering learning about the woman in computer science when she'd expressed interest to Hopper in high school. "And I'm not doing coding for the US government."

Max snorts. "Yeah, well. Even better. You don't owe those fucks anything."

El's smile gets a bit sadder at that, though she does appreciate Max's indignance on her part.

"Yeah... listen, I better get going. We'll talk again soon though, yeah?"

She nods, then remembers Max can't see her. "Yes."

"Oh and El, congrats again. I really am happy for you dorks."

She looks down at her left hand again, slightly heavier now thanks to a particular piece of jewelry presented to her by Mike now adorning her ring finger. "Thanks."

She thinks about their conversation as she changes into her running shorts and a t-shirt. She scribbles a note to Mike, letting him know where she was in case he gets back before she does and takes off for the park once she gets outside their apartment building.

It’s not a long run to the park, she’s not exactly a distance runner, not really even a runner so much either as a jogger, but the movement helps her clear her head and get rid of nervous energy. She has fewer nightmares about the bad men finding her or the Mind Flayer coming back if she she jogs, and besides, she’d figured it wouldn’t hurt to be able to run for a bit if she needed to if ever either of those things _did_ happen.

She thinks about Max’s words about Grace Hopper as her feet tap the pavement and frowns, realizing she won’t be a Hopper for very much longer. She’d looked forward to it before, thinking taking his name would help her to further disappear from any bad men still tracking her, but now…

Everyone at work calls her Jane. Most of their newer friends call her Jane. And she’s fine with that. Jane is her official name. El is her nickname. Jane is for work. El is for close friends and family. El Hopper or Jane Hopper, either way, she was always a Hopper. But now she’ll be a Wheeler. And she’s not sure how to feel about assuming yet another identity twelve years after starting to feel like she has one in the first place.

She stops at her customary park bench by the lake and sits, thinking that taking a break and looking into the water might help her sort out her thoughts a bit more. But it doesn’t. And she jogs back home, still feeling uneasy.

She’s uneasy for the next few weeks, really. And uneasier and uneasier each time she hears someone call her “the future Mrs. Wheeler” or when her boss, a cranky old man snarks, “great, so now we’ll be losing you so you can go off popping out babies” at seeing her engagement ring.

Mike’s uneasy too. He hasn’t enjoyed his time at his job in tech services nearly as much as El has enjoyed hers as a programmer, though she figures that’s likely because he has to deal with a lot more people. At least, she thinks, that’s what would put her on edge.

“Everyone’s just an asshole,” he complains wearily one night. “All the business assholes think the tech guys are just a bunch of egghead losers and all the tech guys think the business assholes are meatheaded idiots, and treat their secretaries like even bigger idiots, even though the secretaries are usually way smarter and nicer than the business assholes. But then because everyone else in my department talks to everyone else like they’re an idiot, no one fucking CALLS us until shit is really bad, and then it’s all an even worse clusterfuck when we finally get to it.”

She holds his hand and nods sympathetically. She doesn’t know what to tell him. It all sounds like the exact opposite of anything she’d ever want to do. She’s happy writing codes and programs in shifts with her few coworkers, even though it is in a gross, windowless back basement and her boss is a mean old man and her coworkers, all men, sometimes do refer to her behind her back as “the quota hire”.

Mike tells her to ignore them when she tells him this, and she usually does. At least she can sometimes go whole shifts without having to talk to any of them, and the work is a good paycheck and comes easily for her.

“They’re just pissed off that a girl is better than them at something they probably thought was their thing,” he tells her one night after listening to her frustrations before they drift off to sleep. “Trust me, as much as I resent the egghead snob stereotype, I do kinda get where it comes from.” He puts his arms around her. “Some of these guys I work with, it’s like, being smart and good with tech is the only thing they ever had going for them and so instead of being insufferable sexist meatheads, they’re just insufferable sexist nerds. Different arena, same shit.”

“How come you didn’t turn out like that?” she asks him.

He looks down at her. “I dunno. I guess when you have your girlfriend, sorry, fiance now, save your ass as many times as I have, your ego takes a backseat and you get used to her being better than you at everything after a while.”

She grins. “That’s a good answer.”

He grins back. “It better be, I rehearsed it even longer than my proposal.”

She playfully swats his arm. “That’s not true.”

“Cross my heart,” he says solemnly, but he’s still grinning.

“I love you, mouthbreather,” she says, burrowing further into his arms.

“Love you too, Future Mrs. Wheeler.”

She stiffens and takes a deep breath. “About that. I’ve been thinking. I’m -” another deep breath, “I’m not sure I want to be Mrs. Wheeler.”

She feels him stiffen too, she’s not looking at him, can’t right now. “Wait, whoa, are we still in the joking part of the evening here? Because saying you don’t want to marry me is kinda more like a give me a heart attack type of prank and not really a haha funny cutesy joke.”

She shores up her courage and looks him in the eye. “I’m not saying I don’t want to marry you. I just… I just don’t know if I want to change my name.”

Beat.

“Oh. Ok.”

“Ok?”

“I mean, ok, that’s um, better than you not wanting to marry me. But I thought you wanted a name change. To be harder to find. And where is this coming from anyway? You never said anything before.”

“I don’t know. I just-”

“You just what?”

“I don’t know!” she nearly shouts, and the lights flicker. Because she doesn’t. She doesn't know. She can’t explain it. She likes the idea of willingly taking a name, as opposed to having names assigned to her, but will she really be taking this name willingly? Is it really willing if it’s something that’s expected of her?

He takes a deep breath, the kind he takes when she knows he’s trying to hold down anger. She shouldn’t have raised her voice, but she’s confused and frustrated too and there are so many feelings and she doesn’t have enough words for them and he’s always so understanding why can’t he just understand now?

“Yeah, well, when you figure it out, let me know, ok?” he rolls over, his back to her, and shuts the light off on his bedside end table.

She wants to say something spiteful back, but can’t think of anything coherent, and that makes her even more angry.

She sighs and rolls over too.

The next morning things are still tense between them. They move around each other quietly, both getting for work and navigating packing of lunches and the feeding of their gray cat, Gandalf.

“Mike. I'm sorry,” she says. She's not really, that is, not sorry for anything she's done because she thinks he's being unfair, but she's sorry he's upset.

He softens a bit, but his tone is still frosty when he says, “It's fine. I just, I'm just, I thought we both had the same idea of what getting married meant.”

_What?_ “What’s that supposed to mean?”

No response.

“ _What does that mean?_ ” she repeats, not satisfied with his silence. “What, you think if I don't take your name I'll just, just, go around with a bunch of other dudes or something?”

He looks at her sharply. “Come on, you know that's not it.”

“How could I? I don't know what it is!”

“It’s… The problem is, you have the chance to announce to the world that you're married. People don't even need to see you or talk to you, they just see your name, Mrs. Wheeler and know you're married. I can't do that, there's no, like, guy equivalent, but if I could, I would, and it hurts that you don't feel the same.”

That hadn't been the answer she'd been expecting. It's a bit nicer than the one she'd been fearing, and in true Mike fashion, is actually kind of romantic. If still a bit… unfair and kind of missing the point in a way she can't really quite put her finger on.

She can't explain that, but her mouth is already open and the angry words are pouring out before she can stuff them down. “That is _such bullshit_.”

“Really.”

“Yeah,” she says, angrier because she needs words for this, so many words that she just doesn't know how to piece together and he knows explaining stuff is hard for her, why is he making her explain herself? “Yeah, really. That's not what name changes are for and you know it.” She has him there, grateful for once for her otherwise generally unused history minor.

He rolls his eyes and that makes her furious. “Yes, I know what they started out as, but you could reclaim that practice.”

“Oh yeah, ok, so I take my husband’s name, because I'm being pressured to take his name in order to prove how empowered I am and how non-sexist that tradition was.” _Ooh, that was pretty good_ , she thinks.

“That’s not - I'm not pressuring you!”

“You're making me feel like shit for saying I might not, what the hell else would you call that?”

He fumes, and she can tell he's ready to fire back, when the phone rings.

“Hello?” he says tersely, picking up the phone. “Yeah.” Sigh. “Yeah, I- yeah ok, I'll be there as soon as I can.”

“Work?”

“Yeah. I gotta go. I'm sorry, I'm -" deep breath. Then, softer, he says, "I'm not trying to make you feel like shit.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know. I love you too.”

He gives her a quick kiss and grabs his wallet, keys, and lunch. “I'll see you later. And - and we can talk more, yeah?”

“Yes.”

She fumes too as she finishes getting ready for work. Gandalf meows in loud indignation when she's so distracted, she hands him her bowl of cereal instead of his bowl of cat-food. "Great, now you're mad at me too," she grumbles, and bolts her food down before running off.

It turns out to be an all around shit day. Between the fight at home and more feedback that she needs to better explain her procedures in layman's terms, she's ready for a good long jog that evening.

_Look at us now, Max_ , she thinks. _Here's that fight you said we were overdue for._

She hates above all that she feels like she's in a situation where compromise is impossible. Is there a halfway happy? If she gives up her last name, the first name she got that really made her start to feel normal, she's now certain she'll feel like she’s doing a disservice to herself. And she worries she'll resent Mike for it. But if she doesn't take his name it will clearly hurt him.

She spends a long time in her park bench going back and forth. _Hurt Mike, or hurt herself? Hurt Mike,or hurt herself?_

It's only when she mentally lists out all the reasons why she'd like to keep being Jane “El” Hopper, that the realization comes to her, and she rushes home. She's not sure he'll be satisfied with the realization, but it's an important distinction, and one she thinks he needs to understand.

He’s just getting inside when she gets there. "Hey, Gandy," she hears him say to the cat over the clatter of his keys on the kitchen counter. "El still out, huh?"

"Just got back," she says from behind him.

"Oh hey. Me too," he says. He looks so bone tired and done with the world, she wants to just drop everything, put their argument on hold, and just go wrap him up in a hug, but her realization continues to ring in the background of her mind and makes her determined to gently say her piece. Getting to it though, will require more words.

“Long day?” she asks him tentatively, not sure where to start.

He gives her a rueful, half-hearted smile. “The longest.”

Beat.

“Look-” they both start, and give small smiles again. “You go ahead,” Mike says.

She takes a deep breath. “Mike, I’m sorry-”

“Oh Jesus, no, look, _I’m sorry._ I know I said you go first, but let me. You don’t - you don’t have anything to be sorry about. There I was, going on about what an enlightened boyfriend, fiance, whatever, I am one second, the next, I’m no better than those - those misogynist mouthbreathers you work with.”

“You’re not-”

“I was an idiot. It doesn’t matter what you want to call yourself, hell, we don't even have to get married, as long as we’re together. That's the most important thing.”

She hadn't quite been expecting that. She takes his hand and looks up at him. “You trying to get out of marrying me?”

He laughs. “Hell no. You can't get rid of me that easy. I'm sorry. I just, work is just so fucking awful, and I feel like you're the only good thing in my life right now and, well, that's not healthy. Or fair to you. I was putting a lot of pressure on us to be the perfect couple, I lost sight of the fact that we're still two separate people.”

She bites her lip, considering. This conversation isn’t going the way she thought it would at all, but she doesn’t mind. And she understands the forgetting they’re two people problem. Hadn’t she had the same problem last night, just wishing he could be inside her head already? “If work is so bad, why not just quit?”

He laughs again. “She says, while they’re planning a big, out of state wedding, just starting out, still living in a tiny apartment, and desperately need a new car.”

“I’m serious. Dad said he’d be more than happy to help with the wedding costs, and the car can probably last at least another year. Besides, I don’t make bad money, and I’m sure you could find something somewhere else.”

“Yeah, but I’ll probably find something somewhere else that’s the same thing I’m doing now, just different scenery and then what’s the point, you know?”

She considers this. “What if it wasn’t the same thing?”

He frowns. “What, like a department head or something? I don’t think I have the experience for that yet. Besides, I’m not ready to become as miserable as my boss.”

“No. Like…” she pauses, trying to sort out the new idea taking shape inside her head. “Like, my boss says I need to better explain my procedures. We all do, but me most of all. I’m not good with words. But you are. We could use someone like you. Someone who understands what we do, but can explain it to people who don’t.”

“Are they looking to hire someone for a position like that? Like, a technical writer?”

“I don’t know. But I can ask.”

His whole being seems to lighten at that, as if the possibility of something a little different has lifted an imaginary weight from his shoulders.

He squeezes her hands in his. “You’re too good to me, you know that?”

She grins and hugs him. “No way. Not possible.”

He hugs her back. “Yes way. Absolutely possible.” He pulls back a bit to look her in the eye again, their arms still around each other. “Here I was having a stupid, macho, existential crisis and being a jerk to you about it, and then you go and not only forgive me for it, you try to find me a new job.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy too,” he says seriously. “That’s why you should take or keep whatever name you want.”

She bites her lip, finally tells him what she realized on the park bench. “You know it’s not a decision I’m making _at_ you, right? It’s a decision I’m making _for_ me.”

He nods as if having realized it too, but not having had the words for it before. She understands that, having felt the same. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I realized too that it's stupid to think taking the Wheeler name would hide you any better than having Hopper's. Like, duh, the lab has a file on me too. I'm so sorry. It was a douchey thing for me to freak out over, especially since I already gave you one name, which is like, already weird.”

“Mouthbreather. I _like_ when you call me El.”

He smiles again, wider this time, so much like the boy who’d kissed her at a cheesy school dance all those years ago.

“I like when you call me mouthbreather. Maybe you could find something different too. Like, there have to be other people who need someone like you. Something where maybe you could use your history minor too. One of my company’s big wigs donated a lot of money to the museum recently. Something about updating their archives. You should look into it. You should be happy too.”

“Ok.”

They both enjoy the new jobs they eventually get. Mike still has to deal with people who hate each other, but likes feeling like he has a hand in helping people not hate each other. And El finds she needs more words at the museum, but the museum people are generally quiet, or eccentric, like herself, and she finds that less intimidating. And where El has her nightly jogs to relieve work stresses, Mike takes up creative writing again per Nancy’s advice, “to have an outlet”.

Will is supportive when he hears this, as after nudging from his partner, he’s been working on a new series of creative drawings outside of his work as a graphic designer. The following Christmas Eve, when the party is all back in Hawkins catching up in the Wheeler basement, the two decide to cobble together a graphic novel about a waffle-loving telekinetic, super-heroine, after much teasing from their other friends, a lot of wine, and maybe a dare or two from Lucas and Dustin.

Months later, Max says at El’s bachelorette party, after a lot of tequilla and champagne, and maybe an attempted, drunken, car-less, Burger King drive through run, that El and Mike should just combine their last names to make a new one and call themselves the Whoppers.

Over the years, the Hopper-Wheeler household winds up receiving nearly as many burger tchotchke gifts as they do Star Wars, X-Men, and eventually, Harry Potter figurines and memorabilia gifts. It serves as the springboard for Mike and Will’s second most successful graphic novel series, about a family of burgers who fight off inter-dimensional threats with condiments.

El hates fighting with Mike. And she’s grateful over the years that their fights are rare, and usually just the result of perfect storm combinations of stress and misunderstandings (most of these, incidentally, occur during the year they try to plan their wedding). But she finds she enjoys (and he seems to too) making up quite a bit.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a LOT of feelings on name changes. Namely (ha) that everyone should be free to make whatever CHOICE works best for them and should not be made to feel like shit about whatever they choose, and that the choice itself has nothing whatsoever to do with how committed the woman is to the relationship and everything to do with how she sees herself, her identity, and what she wants to be called moving forward. It probably comes as no surprise that I personally did not change my name upon marrying.
> 
> I don't judge people for writing fics or headcanons where El/Jane takes Mike's last name or writes "El Wheeler" or "Jane Wheeler" all over notebooks with hearts, especially because I did that with crushes I had in middle school when I didn't know keeping my own last name was even an option (post-sexist society my ass). But I do dislike the idea that it's a way for a woman to show how much she loves her husband and I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of name changes being presented to El that way, particularly since her names have almost always been assigned to her by men.
> 
> So hence, this fic. Please don't hate me for making our babies fight! All couples have disagreements from time to time, plus, how else was I going to get to a point where Mike and Will write a graphic novel series about an inter-dimensional crime-fighting burger family? ;)
> 
> Oh, also, I know next to nothing about tech services work or programming, but I do know that museums and libraries always need lots of tech-savvy people to help us do our jobs better *points to username*. And I do think El would naturally gravitate towards computers (being, for her, easier to understand than humans) especially given her friends in the AV Club. I also think she'd really like history, as she likely never encountered it as a subject at the lab.
> 
> Whew, sorry, this note is in danger of becoming longer than the work itself! Shutting up now so you can give me the feedback I'll honestly say I desperately crave :)


End file.
